Back in 2005, Blair thought these would be his Olympics

Back in 2006, I broke a great story in the Times about Tony Blair’s tie. Yep, that’s me, always the heavyweight. But it was good stuff. What we’d noticed — me and Simon from the picture desk — was that whenever Blair felt particularly under pressure, he’d pop out the next day in his special Olympic tie. It was a stripy affair, worn by the whole crew when we won the bid in 2005. Obviously, it gave him a lift.

To be honest, it was rather like shooting fish in a barrel. This was 2006, remember, so Blair was under pressure all the time. I barely even remember why. ‘Tony Blair wore his Olympic tie yesterday to give his press conference on the Middle East with rumours of Cabinet splits over his policy towards Lebanon,’ I wrote. We all remember that being a big deal, right?

He wore it after numerous embarrassments over ‘cash for peerages’, he wore it defending ‘his controversial education reforms in the Commons hours after Labour rebels had forced him to water down controversial plans about school selection’ (?) and he wore it after the government lost a vote to detain terrorist subjects for 90 days. He wore it when bad things happened with Charles Clarke, Patricia Hewitt and John Prescott, whoever the hell they were. He wore it, is my point, a lot.

The best bit of the story was the follow-up, when we got in touch with Jeff Banks, the designer, who told us that Blair actually had six of the things. ‘Downing Street keeps calling up and asking for new ones,’ he told me. ‘It’s like he’s chewing through them or something.’ Then he sent us one, which we gave away in a competition.